[Tips and Info] Bardin

Other ‘Tips and Info’ threads for other Characters are linked at the bottom.


  1. Ranger Veteran
  2. Ironbreaker
  3. Slayer
  4. Outcast Engineer
  5. Links to other threads

Feel free to ask or answer any questions, and I’ll add it to the main post, so it’s easier to find. I will add, remove or reword sections on request.


Introduction:

These are discussion threads, where the aim is to share and test different mechanical interactions or gameplay strategies that aren’t made clear by game descriptions or by general gameplay experience. For that reason I will not be focusing on breakpoints too heavily.


Links to other guides:

These are links to builds and in-depth information on every Career and Weapon. My guides are more to share information and mechanic interactions that aren’t obvious or take some testing:

For in-depth guides with specific stat builds and breakpoints, check out Sleezyrats and Royal w/ Cheese’s guides on Steam guides:
Steam Community :: Guide :: Tweaking Your Build (Supplement to the Build Guides)

Movement Speed techniques with all Characters/Careers/Weapons:
Steam Community :: Guide :: In-depth Movement Guide



1. Ranger Veteran:

1. Ranger Veteran:


Health: 120 (with 20% Health on Necklace) - 135 (with WPoS Passive)
Cooldown: 120s (108s with 10% CDR) - 2s (removed per Master of Improvisation)
Cooldown Reduction On-Hit: 0.3s
Cooldown Reduction On-Damaged: 0.3s


Tips:

  • Potential 35% chance not to use Heals/Pots/Bomb if you use the Traits
  • Potential x?% Damage Reduction with Exuberance and Drunken Brawler
  • He has 10% chance not to consume items (potential 35% with the Healers Touch Trait on Necklace), so let him carry Bandages and Bombs, and let him heal people when there’s an abundance of them. Test his luck and see how many duplicate heals you can get
  • Ranger’s Parting Gift buff will stay forever if you do not throw a Bomb, allowing you to double Bomb on your next Career Skill use
  • Drunken Brawler stacks amount to 9% Attack Speed and 12% Damage Reduction a Potential x?% Damage Reduction with Exuberance and 17% Attack Speed with the Exhilarating Vapours Career Skill Talent
  • Exhilarating Vapours gives a total of around 33 Health, due to the buff lasting longer than the Career Skill effect
  • Throwing Axes with Last Resort causes your final thrown Axe to benefit from Last Resort
  • Shield Slams do not grant Exuberance
  • Stamina/Movement Speed is viable on Trinket, due to Move Speed tech with certain Melee Weapons & No Dawdling

General opinion:

Ranger Veteran can be played as with support or damage focused builds to great effect. Regardless of whether he builds for it or not, he is the master of making use of any Items, due to his Passive chance to duplicate them.

In melee he’s not incredible strong, but has some of the best Ranged Weapon choices there are. Playing with a Shield to create space for reloads and Ranged spam is the playstyle I prefer.

Most of his Ranged Weapons are good, except the Throwing Axes, which swallow up a lot of your build and don’t really feel like it was worth it- the speed at which you get them back is also too slow. Other than that, his Ranged builds are some of the strongest in the game; Grudgeraker, Crossbow (Hunter), Masterwork Pistol and Handgun don’t require a huge amount of skill, but can easily compete for high damage and effectiveness.

For the Crossbow (Hunter) Gungni’s Cunning build, make sure to aim down your sights (right click), as much as possible for the inherent 10% Crit Chance.

His more supportive builds are extremely strong too. Item dupes, Attack Speed, Damage Reduction, Temporary Health, Pots or Bomb drops, Ammo drops and a knockback. Just think about what the builds in your group will need.

Synergy:
Any melee heavy group due to his low melee damage. Groups that need temporary health, or who can benefit from Pots/Bombs/AS and DR buffs.

Using Grungni’s Cunning with other Shotgun type Ranged Weapons in the group is one of the best group compositions in the game. Especially a Zealot or BH with the Griffon-Foot.


Questions:

**


2. Ironbreaker:

2. Ironbreaker:


Health: 180 (with 20% Health on Necklace) - 203 (with WPoS Passive)
Cooldown: 120s (108s with 10% CDR)
Cooldown Reduction On-Hit: 0.25s
Cooldown Reduction On-Damaged: 0.5s


Tips:

  • Potential 52.5% Power with Barrage/Hunter and Drengbarazi Oath (67.5% BoG/62.5 RES)
  • Potential 40% Attack Speed, when you’re hit with Vengeance, and 70% total (SS and AS)
  • Potential 70% Stamina Regeneration with Miner’s Rythm
  • Potential 8 Stamina Shields
  • Under Pressure fires quickly enough that it’s worth using a Crit Hunter build on Drakefire Pistols
  • Rune-Etched Shield generates 10% Power to every person in your group. Recommended for a Shield, Trollhammer Torpedo and Drengbarazi Oath combo
  • A Cooldown Reduction build with The Rolling Mountain and Drengbarazi Oath will allow you to quickly build your Career skill back, especially with Greataxe, Coghammer and Dual Hammers. He also has 0.5 second Cooldown Reduction per enemy hit
  • With the CDR build, Speed and Strength Pots can be as good as Concentration Pots, due to CDR On-Kill
  • Vengeance stacks only start building while you’re in combat
  • Gains 50% Damage Reduction during his Career Skill Impenetrable (80% total with his Passive)
  • Gromril Armour is not removed from venting Overcharge or taking fall damage
  • If you’re tanking, stay close to your team. If you’re off alone slamming enemies, your team are left vulnerable, and the space/CC you’re creating isn’t being made use of
  • Venting damage is not lowered by Damage Reduction

General opinion:

Effective as both a DPS and a tank. Using a Shield and tanking in tight corridors is one of the more fun things to do with Ironbreaker, as THP on Stagger allows you to trade with high Elite density, while CCing everything in front of you.

He works with all of his available Ranged Weapons, with Drakefire Pistols (Barrage/Hunter), being his best melee DPS option.

In terms of melee, Greataxe can work with both On-Kill (Smiter) or On-Stagger (Enhanced Power). Using Greataxe with a Cooldown reduction build and Drakefire Pistols is the highest damage I’ve been able to get out of him. Remember that the Light 3 has 10% inherent Crit Chance.

When using a Shield stay close to your team, as standing alone leaves your group vulnerable, and doesn’t let anyone make use of your Stagger. You should be deciding where the frontline is and holding it. If you’re standing alone somewhere knocking rats over, you’re defeating the point of using a Shield.

Everything can be made to work with 1H Axe and Mining Pick being his weakest Melee Weapons. They’re still usable if you have a good build and teammates who can make up for their shortfalls.

Ironbreaker’s Ranged options are all worthwhile and viable.

Synergy:
Ironbreaker has good synergy with and high DPS glass cannon Careers. Shade especially can make use of his Career skill, due to her ability to one-shot man-sized enemies from behind.

As his CDR DPS builds, any Career that can give melee buffs. WHC (CDR-Crit) is especially strong due to it’s ability to feed 2H Weapons Swiftslaying procs.


Questions:



3. Slayer:

3. Slayer:


Stats:

Health: 150 (with 20% Health on Necklace) - 172 (with WPoS Passive)
Cooldown: 40 (36 with 10% CDR)
Cooldown Reduction On-Hit: 0.5s (1.5s with Adrenaline Surge)
Cooldown Reduction On-Damaged: 0.1s


Tips:

  • Potential 57.5% or 67.5% (A Thousand Cuts) Attack Speed
  • Potential 60% Movement Speed
  • Adrenaline Surge CDR is increased up to 3x on max stacks
  • Opportunist effects his Career Skill
  • Grimmir’s Focus provides a flat 40% damage reduction
  • Crunch, on Cataclysm, can stagger SV/Mauler/Beastgor in all movesets (including their overhead attack and Beastgor charge). It can stop Berzerker/Monk even during combo attacks. It can Stagger Packmasters when it’s not in the hook animation or when it already hooked someone. It can stop Ratling/Warpfire Rats firing. For Chaos Warriors, only the overhead and running attack cannot be interrupted
  • Dual Wield Heavy Attacks give 2 stacks of Trophy Hunter
  • Dawi Drop requires good timing to make the most out of
  • Dawi Drop works with Bombs: throw the Bomb and then use your Career Skill while it’s in the air

General opinion:

Slayer chops stuff up.

While you’re able to play pretty much solo as Slayer, remember to help your teammates out if they’re in trouble. Being a Ranged Career with low Stamina count and watching a Slayer off in the distance while you’re struggling to get any ranged damage out, or deal with Specials, is frustrating.

Synergy:
Duals Axes have a lot of synergy with Handmaiden’s Stamina Regeneration Aura, especially if she’s using a Shield to CC everything for you.

Slayer can pretty much play solo, but a Special killer and someone who can CC or buff him benefits him most.


Questions:


4. Outcast Engineer:

4. Outcast Engineer:


Health: 120 (with 20% Health on Necklace) - 135 (with WPoS Passive)
Cooldown: 60s
Cooldown Reduction On-Hit: 0s
Cooldown Reduction On-Damaged: 0s


Tips:

  • As of 26/11/2020, Heat Sink with Leading Shots has no interaction with the fully charged Drakegun
  • Leading Shots works on the Crank Gun and improves Elite/Special/Boss damage
  • Leading Shots will eat Bombs, while giving NO benefit
  • Leading Shots removes the random crit on range weapon, no longer affected by Crit Chance, and making it a guaranteed crit every 4 shots(25% Crit Chance)
  • Combined Arms gets 2 stacks from dual wield Weapons Heavy Attacks (Dual Hammers)
  • Bombardier deals good Boss damage. If you can avoid Shrapnel in any way, Grenadier on Trinket synergises really well
  • With Bombardier, focus on picking up Incendiary Bombs, rather than Blast Bombs
  • Piston Power Staggers Bosses
  • Piston Power works with the Grudge-Raker shove, but not the Trollhammer Torpedo shove
  • Armour Piercing Slugs allows you to shoot through shields
  • Armour Piercing Slugs works with the Crank Gun
  • Armour Piercing Slugs works with the Trollhammer Torpedo, despite saying ‘Non-Explosive Ranged Attacks’: aim at the lower part of Bosses, so you hit them and then the floor by their feet for two explosions
  • Armour Piercing Slugs works with the Drakegun
  • Armour Piercing Slugs gives double Trait ammo back (e.g. double headshot gives 2 ammo back with Conservative Shooter)
  • When you switch to the Crank Gun, holding right click to wind it, will increase the initial shooting speed by 20%, whereas if you shoot with left click it has to wind up to a higher fire rate
  • When you are holding the Crank Gun, you have 1 dodge count and 110% dodge distance
  • Any attack speed bonus also increases Crank Gun firerate
  • Ablative Armour: each damage taken will remove 5% of damage reduction, including self-inflicted damage like venting a drakefire weapon. It’s almost useless to reduce multi-instance damage source (gas, blight storm, surrounded by horde etc.)
  • Cooldown Regeneration, Cooldown Reduction, Resourceful Combatant and Resourceful Sharpshooter all generate Crank Gun ammo, with stacks. It’s really not worth using though
  • Venting damage is not lowered by Damage Reduction
  • Gunsmith (Passive) does not give 50% more ammo to Drakefire Weapons
  • When using Dual Hammers, use Stagger THP, and Piston Power, for the most THP generation (Light → Heavy)
  • Piston Power can be triggered right before it comes back on cooldown, giving you two uses of it
  • Trollhammer Torpedo works with Armour Piercing Slugs, Grenadier and Shrapnel. Conservative Shooter also works
  • Stamina/Movement Speed is viable on Trinket, due to Move Speed tech with certain Melee Weapons

General Opinion:

He’s incredibly glass cannon, but you can deal a lot of damage if you’re enabled by your team. Although he’s very team oriented, using a Shield Weapon however, will allow you to survive alone in bunker spots for longer. OE’s reload times and constant Cranking mean you need to constantly be aware of your surroundings and positioning.

When using Shield Weapons with Ablative Armour, Barkskin can make you much tankier due to how much Temporary Health Shield slamming generates.

Superior Gaskets and Innovative Ammo Hoppers, are best for minimizing Cranking, as it can be frustrating and leave you vulnerable.

While using the Drakegun, use the Crank Gun on Hordes with Specials in and Drakegun on Hordes without. With Innovative Ammo Hoppers you have untlimited ammo if you land Special kills. While very stationary, Drakegun on Outcast Engineer is one of the higher AoE DPS output builds in the game, due to all of the Power available to him.

With the Drakefire Pistols, Crit Chance stacking, Combined Arms, and Hunter are recommended. And due to the double stacks you get on Combined Arms, Dual Hammers are recommended.

The Masterwork Pistol synergizes well with Leading Shots, as you can deal a lot of damage to Bosses with the alternate fire, also granting additional damage to the Crank Gun.

Armour Piercing Slugs is best with Grudgeraker, due to it’s ability to help you clear Specials through Hordes, and it causes Conservative Shooter to give two ammo back with piercing headshots. Leading Shots with Scrounger doesn’t generate a lot of ammo back, and Crit% on Items doesn’t stack with it. Combined Arms can work, if you want a more melee-focused build.

Handgun works well, and you can use Combined Arms to get higher damage on Chaos Warriors and Bosses.

Synergy:
Outcast Engineer synergises well with any Melee heavy group, so that he has more safety.


Questions:

Combined Arms vs Leading Shots with the Flamethrower? Armour Piercing Slugs?!?!?
While Leading Shots allows you to get Hunter up quickly, Combined arms will allow you to reach a max of 40% Power with Barrage (potential 97.5%), while Hunter is only 25% (potential 82.5%). You use Barrage, because it’s more consistent than Hunter due to lack of Crit Chance, and it also gives you Power VS everything, unlike Hunter, which gives Power VS the specific enemy armour type you Crit. Leading Shots is still really good for benefitting the Crank Gun too.

Armour Piercing Slugs works with the Drakegun and can Cleave through Elites, Bosses and Shielders. For higher difficulties that’s insanely good. It obviously also benefits the Crankgun.

Does Cooldown Reduction on Trinket reduce the time it takes to reload?
Cooldown Reduction does give Crank Gun ammo, but it’s an almost unnoticable amount. RC and RS do work, but the build is not recommended. Grail Knight/Foot Knight Cooldown Regeneration does nothing, due to Engi’s Career Skill not regenerating through melee hits.

What is Armour Piercing Slugs interaction with Flamethrower/Drakefires?
It works with both, allowing you to Cleave through Elites, Bosses and Specials.

Do Shrapnel or Explosive Ordinance still work with the Trollhammer Torpedo or was it patched? (training dummys numbers show no difference)
Grenadier works, others don’t.


5. Links to other discussion threads:

5. Links to other discussion threads:

Bardin:

[Tips and Info] Bardin

Saltzpyre:

[Tips and Info] Saltzpyre

Kerillian:

[Tips and Info] Kerillian

Kruber:

[Tips and Info] Kruber

Sienna:

[Tips and Info] Sienna



3 Likes

I started playing him with the superior gasket, then switched to the one where you don’t lose pressure while shooting (mostly so I could do some challenges). And if you plan to shoot the crank gun all the way it’s much better - you can shoot without side effects, and after all, if you don’t lose the buff, a single crank is keeping the stack at 5. Handy for hordes.

I like to use the “career weapons” when possible, for fashion statements, but I think the best ranged weapon to complement the crank gun is the handgun: fast and far-away shots, which is what the crank gun is lacking.

I thought about using the flamer, mostly because you can - while maintaining some anti-special capability - but its best feature (horde clear) seems to be a bit redundant with the crank gun. Why do you use it? Which difficulty?

Leading shots’s awesome to improve armor damage with the ultimate.

3 Likes

Cata, and rotate between the Flamethrower/Crank gun depending on the range/Elite density needed and also to get more out of him, since he doesn’t get the same health sustain as IB. You don’t need to burn overcharge as much, because it’ll go down during Crankgunning.

Yet to try it on a deed, but I’m assuming it’ll be quite insane. Especially with the Special killing Ult.

1 Like

Try it! It’s amazing. It can definitely pierce SV and I THINK it pierces CW, also.

2 Likes

Well I just saw a Reddit post where a bunch of people tested if it affected basically anything at all and the verdict seems to be that it’s a dead property on Engi.

I’m really curious if cooldown regen increases do anything. Does FK’s Inspiring Blow affect the regen rate of pressure stacks? Does GK’s CD regen duty?

Has anyone tried Resourceful SS with leading shots on Drakegun or similar? Does it regen any bar?

So many questions, gonna have to get a mate onto modded to help me test some of these unless they’ve already been worked out and I’ve missed some posts.

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Came to the same conclusion and quite honestly, that should change. The trinket property should speed the meter gain from cranking by 10%.

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Yeah that or reduce the cost of firing by 10%. Either would be fine honestly.

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Honestly: That’s even better!

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Ok tonight me and a mate jumped onto modded to test a bunch of stuff related to Engi. All testing done in keep with creature spawner difficulty set to legend.

Firstly tried heat sink with leading shots on Drakegun. Worked fine for left click but unfortunately seemed to do nothing for the alt fire. Couldn’t discern any heat refunded on alt fire at all. For Drakegun Engi I’d say stick to thermal equaliser with armour piercing slugs, or if running leading shots maybe Hunter Or RSS (but Ult gains from RSS are really minimal).

Next up tried using FK’s Inspiring Blow to speed up Ult charge. First we timed from first crank to a full Ult bar using superior gaskets and hoppers with nothing else for the control and got 58 seconds. As a side note this puts pressure stacks at about 0.4 Ult units per second per stack, so you generate around 2 units per second with 5 stacks (default Ult has 60 units, hoppers has 90).

Then we tested with Inspiring Blow and to my great surprise it generates Ult cooldown even when Engi has no pressure stacks! Couldn’t be bothered figuring out the exact amount it generates sorry. Then we tried with him doing the full cranks again but with me as FK continuously shield bashing a group of SV the whole time and it took it from the previous 58 seconds to fully charge down to 35 seconds! Basically Inspiring Blow FK + Engi = Chad Combo.

Couldn’t be assed testing with GK’S Ult regen quest. Who knows how that might interact with it.

Now for Grudge Raker shenanigans.

Firstly as posted elsewhere GR bashes do indeed proc leading shots so with Scrounger you can push x3 then shoot over and over for effectively infinite ammo. Honestly a bit bonkers if tedious to manage.

Secondly, also as posted elsewhere, GR bash does indeed proc piston power. It’s super weird though. It doesn’t seem to generate as much stagger as melee weapons do. Piston Power couldn’t reliably stagger CWs out of their attacks with GR bash, but could with coghammer heavies so… Piston Power is basically still a complete mystery to me. No idea how it works lol. Piston Power + GR bash could reliably stagger everything under a Chaos Warrior though. Genuinely hilarious against groups of SV.

Lastly Armour Piercing slugs did indeed seem to increase the cleave of drake pistol alt fire, but as far as I could tell only took its total enemies hit from 10 up to 11 so definitely not a big help there. I imagine it’s significantly more impactful for Drakegun but that one seemed like a nightmare to test so didn’t try :man_shrugging:

Hope y’all enjoy the info. If anyone wants to double check any of it or do further testing that would honestly be sick. Gonna tag some people not already in this thread who might find this stuff interesting.

@Velsix @Incandescent @TmanDW

5 Likes

Yeah, I really can’t tell if it’s making a difference or not.

Just tested and you get about the same from each, so it’s either not or barely working. Gonna report it as a possible bug.

Also it’s kind of bitter sweet, because I’ve had such success playing with a build that doesn’t work, and now I can use something that does. rofl

Would be sad if they didn’t make it work, because Leading Shots seems like one of the better choices for the Crank Gun too.

1 Like

I guess it’s internally consistent? After all the alt fire ticks don’t actually cost any heat, it’s the initial charge up that costs heat, hence there’s nothing for heat sink to “refund”. Regardless it’s silly that it has basically no effect for the alt fire. It should just remove a small chunk of heat per proc in this instance. Works fine for the left click I guess but that’s not really a lot of help…

It’s still pretty good for ammo sustain with the MW Pistol, or easy Hunter procs with either Drake fire weapon, or scumming infinite ammo with Grudge Raker (aforementioned bash interaction). All that + better armour damage for the crank gun is a solid niche. It would definitely make sense though if it also worked with heat sink. Armour piercing slugs is real good and hard to compete with though gotta say.

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Silence!!! :shushing_face: :innocent:

I CAN RUN HUNTER ON MY FLAMETHROWER!!! :drooling_face: :triumph: :triumph: :triumph: :triumph:

EDIT: Turns out Barrage with Combined Arms is better.

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It’s basically barrage that’s easier to proc and lasts twice as long right? What’s not to love?

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It’s just a shame Leading Shots is on the same row as Combined Arms

42.5% Melee Power would be insane.

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Interesting findings, especially the Inspiring Blow one. We might end up seeing Engineer + FK replacing Ironbreaker + FK pairings for duo runs.

Edit: Not to derail but would anyone happen to know if Fatshark ever fixed bomb Slayer + Dawi Drop or does that trick still work now after bombs were buffed on Cata?

2 Likes

it wouldn’t be, Drakegun already cleaves pretty much everything in its effective range (up until a limit of like 200 maulers or something stupid)

it works :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes

Added new info and created a thread on WPoS.

True!

Since this was updated, I’d add for a new player to get the Forgotten Relics DLC if possible.
Trollhammer torpedo increases the enjoyability of this career immensely. It acts like the ultimate you’d be lacking :slight_smile:

1 Like

Update: Added RV, IB, Slayer and Weapons sections.

Thx. I’ll see if I can find more info on it, and probably add Dawi Drop breakpoints too. I can’t remember if it effects Bomb damage either. Slayer and Saltz are my least played.

This does still work btw. Throw and then use the Career Skill, so the Bomb benefits while still in the air.

2 Likes

Some niche Slayer tech that might be worth adding: Dawi Drop seems to function as a general power increase as long as you get air, so it can actually get similar stagger breakpoints to Crunch (though again you have to get air to get the bonus).

1 Like